


Worse still to die of sentimentality

by Sarahzile



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Old Age, Older Characters, Post-Apocalypse, Self-Reflection, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6336082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarahzile/pseuds/Sarahzile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting old after the apocalypse is a hell of a thing</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worse still to die of sentimentality

She does not count things by the passage of time, not anymore. It has always been difficult to mark exact years and dates, and anyway it was a neurosis of the old world. Why should she bother?

In her childhood, the Mothers had taught her to follow the passing seasons as a matter of practicality. You plant at this time, harvest at this time, and incessantly pull weeds in between. Counting days was vital. Without a sense of the seasons, you wouldn’t have food to eat, wouldn’t be able to trade, wouldn’t know when to move on to the next plot before the sun baked all of the water out of a field. 

When she was captured, she started to count the days out of habit. On the first day, there was not much to remember beyond the blur of limbs, the screaming, the lack of pain even as she watched blood flow out of her body. 

Her mother died on the third day, silently, in the corner of the truck. The robbers pushed the body out into the moving sands.

“No use looking back, girlie,” said one through a mash of rotten teeth.

So she stopped counting. There were no seasons where they took her. The meager crops were hidden high up in the citadel, almost more precious than water. Everything was sand and heat, the sun always bearing down upon their heads, captors and captives alike. She succumbed to the simple progression of action and reaction.

She became more steel than flesh, less a thing to be coveted and more a weapon to be deployed. She overheard jokes about how Furiosa could stir fear in even Joe’s heart. A man must protect himself, after all, and sometimes it is best to draw the threat into your own circle of power. 

So, she gained a little power. She drove the War Rig. She received a regular share of water. She was important in a small way. 

It was enough, for a while.  
___

The quiet should be a reward of her work and age, though Furiosa feels unfit for peace. Most mornings, she gets up before sunrise and walks down to the overlook. In the early days, she would take this opportunity to look for threats. She still does, but this is increasingly unecessary. There has not been a raid in many years, not since the people of the Bullet Farm came to the Citadel, begging for food and water. There was a band of scavengers a couple years back that roamed along the trade route, but they were scared off easily enough. 

Now, Furiosa sees the people opening the gates to welcome arriving traders. She sees the gardens, larger every year and growing in nicely for this season. There are children below, stumbling out of homes to fetch water for the day, well-fed and some even a little fat. 

Furiosa looks down at all of this, and aches. She has not succumbed to dementia or illness, like some of the Many Mothers did in their last years. Yet she can feel a fragility to her bones that was not there even a year ago. It irritates her more than the placid citadel. She has run her body down more than some, certainly, but it is a shock to realize that it will not run forever. 

Parts that have finally run their course are junked, melted down, or scavenged. In a roundabout way, they are made useful again. She has not yet figured out how to do this with a crumbling body. She is little more than a poorly made machine.  
She must be in her sixties now. She may even be seventy. This seems like an astonishing age, though she reminds herself that some of the Mothers surely made it that far. 

After her morning reconnaissance, she walks amongst the rotating racks of plants in the oldest part of the gardens. She watches for puddles of water, jutting rocks, loose stairs. How humiliating, to die of a fall! She has seen the ravages of old age and a weakened immune system, where even a scratch could spell the end.

Worse still to die of sentimentality, she reminds herself. Yet she reflects on memories more and more, helpless to resist. There are days where the past is a quagmire, where she can only just pull herself out and continue on with the world around her. Was this what it was like for the Many Mothers, as they slipped out of this world and into the other? Her senses are taking leave of her, almost imperceptibly. It is as if someone is gently, inexorably drawing a veil over her face.  
Young Angela walks beside Furiosa most mornings, and some of the afternoons. 

Capable, who helped deliver the girl many years ago, had held the squalling, vernix-covered thing in her hands and conducted a rude survey of its parts while the others watched.

“A girl, thank god,” she had announced. The Dag took one look at her daughter, and sobbed inconsolably for half an hour under an avalanche of relief.

The girl is past thirty now, though no one but The Dag has bothered to keep careful track of her age. Properly, she should not be called “Young” anything now, but the habits of her mothers are deeply bound.

No one can mistake Young Angela for anyone else’s child. She will turn a certain way, speak a certain way, her pale hair transformed into a sheer curtain by the angle of the sunrise, her eyes like dark wounds in her face, and Furiosa finds herself in the desert, the stench of diesel and flesh, the strange and silent man from the waste with his precious blood. She cannot breathe.

“Furiosa,” says Young Angela. She has paused on a threshold, looking back over her shoulder. “You all right, Mother?”

“Yes, yes,” Furiosa says, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. She is allowed to be a little ill-tempered, she tells herself. Young Angela shrugs it off and keeps walking.

“You know,” says Young Angela. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I’ve had an idea.”

“Mhm.” Furiosa bends over to inspect the branch of a fruit tree. “You have ideas like the others have babies.”

Young Angela laughs. “That’s probably closer to the truth than you’d like.”

Furiosa snaps upright. “I didn’t even think you liked men! Well, if you’re in trouble -”

“No, no!” Young Angela covers her face with her hands, though not quickly enough to hide her blushing. “Not like that! Ugh, now I’ve ruined it.”

Furiosa waits silently, her hand still cradling a half-grown pomegranate. More than any of the other children, Young Angela needs space to think. She is not delicate, but she has always seemed better suited to another world, ever since she first squalled in her mother’s arms. Not this place, certainly, but also not the one before. Toast, for all her toughness, goes almost mystical over the girl.

“She’s a harbinger,” Toast says. “Like someone sent her back from time to come. Poor thing, stuck here with us.” 

By now, they’ve all learned to lean back and let her run her course.

After a moment, Young Angela lowers her hands. Her face is still a little pink, but she seems to have composed herself enough to move forward.

“What is it, then?” asks Furiosa.

“All right,” Young Angela says, sighing. “There are so many kids around anymore, right?”

Furiosa nods.

“But what do they do all day? I mean, they help out around here, but that just doesn’t take up as much time as it used to.”

“Mhm.”

“So, I...” Young Angela wiggles her shoulders, purses her lips. “Well. I thought that maybe we could put together some sort of school. For the kids, I mean.”

Furiosa turns back to the pomegranate tree.

“What would you teach?” she finally says.

“Oh, lots of things. I think math and science would be useful, especially if some of them get interested in horticulture, you know? And medicine, obviously, and reading and writing. Some art and literature to loosen it all up. I figure the Mothers would be good teachers to start. Toast seemed really interested.”

“She would be.” Furiosa nods, feeling the bones and ligaments in her neck creaking. “Progress, I guess.”

Young Angela lets a little half smile crawl across her face. “Things can’t stay the same, Mother. They never do.”  
___

Later, deep in the night, Furiosa finds that she cannot sleep. The pallet beneath her is full of lumps, every sigh and scratch in the Citadel is amplified in her stone room. She sits up and walks over to the curtained window, hobbling a little. Maybe she should concede to Capable and allow them to make her a softer bed. But then soft things don’t last very long at all, even in a desert that is slowly filling up with people. There will always be something. The water will go sour. Some bandits will attack. There will be infighting, and people will destroy their little society. No lessons are learned forever. 

She realizes, with a detached point of view, that she is mired in sadness tonight. All this work over her lifetime - a lifetime full of scrabbling, of fighting, of arguing and even diplomacy - all of it could be undone a week after her death.

She thinks of the school. They had schools in the old world, she was told. What good did it do them? But, then, what good does it do the people of the Waste to keep making the same mistakes over and over? At least some could learn about the mistakes, and maybe hope to do better.

It’s not a done thing. Furiosa could still say no. She wonders if that will do any good in deterring Young Angela, or any of the other young ones. They’ve grown into a very different world than the one of their childhoods. Everything, anything, must seem possible to them.

Yet she finds her mind wandering to the thought of a school room. The Bio-dome, maybe. No, really, it is the ideal place for a school. It has such good light, and books, and food practically growing from the walls. It might even clear out the last ghosts of the horrible times there, if the others would agree to it. They would march in for the first few days, defiant, grim-faced, but it could ease over time. Furiosa thinks that it might work.

Anything might work, if luck and effort are on their side. They have been so far.

Furiosa wanders over to the small table that serves as a kind of desk. One of the young ones, probably Capable’s youngest son, has left a scrawled note and a mug of water there. She sits and passes the note from hand to hand, feeling the weave of the paper between her fingertips. This could be a precious thing, this paper. Right now, it’s a novelty, but it could be collected for doing geometry, for recording the plantings, for writing histories. 

She drinks from the mug, sighing in satisfaction. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was.

It could work. The idea is beginning to crystallize in her mind, becoming more concrete with each pass. It is not the most audacious thing they have done. It is possible.

She takes another swig. It is highly unlikely that she will live to see more than the first few years of such a thing. But it would give her some peace at the end, more than a soft mattress or a pillow would, more than a mug of water or a full belly. If they want to carve a headstone, like they have done for the other Mothers, they might say “She let them build a school”. That would be just as good as anything else.

Furiosa makes herself lie down, though she does not believe sleep will come. She closes her eyes and thinks, for the first time in many years, that it might be okay to let go.


End file.
